Sold To The Cruel Prince

Chapter 166: Missing Her

The dungeons were cold enough to feel alive, the darkness pooling in every corner like something patient and watchful.

Three men knelt in chains before Theron, their voices rising and breaking as they pleaded for mercy, for patience, for the chance to explain themselves. He did not seem to hear them. He sat with one foot braced against the stone, sharpening his sword against a whetstone with slow, deliberate strokes, the rasp of steel against stone the only answer he gave them.

His mind was elsewhere.

He could still feel the softness of her lips against his, the shocking warmth of that brief kiss that had somehow lodged itself inside him and refused to leave. Worse than that was the image that followed it, the sight of her leaning so easily toward someone else as though she had never meant anything extraordinary by it at all.

Even now, he could not find it in himself to be angry at her. His anger had nowhere to go except inward, curling tightly through his chest until it became something that felt more like frustration with himself than resentment toward her.

He was angry because he wanted her.

He was angry because he did not understand why he wanted her.

And that confusion made everything worse, because for the first time in his life, he did not know what he was supposed to do.

From the shadows, Kael emerged, silent as a thought, and bowed his head before the Crown Prince. He moved with the careful discipline of a man who had already learned that some moods were better approached with caution.

When he spoke, his voice carried the sober weight of bad news.

"Sire, I have the reports of the families hiding cotton," he said. "There is an underground trade happening now. Some noble children are involved. Their plan is to hoard it until the price rises sharply and then sell."

Theron paused.

The whetstone stilled in his hand.

He lifted his head slowly. "Who burned all the cotton?" he asked.

The question had not come from nowhere. He had dreamed it, or remembered it, or perhaps dreamed so vividly that it had begun to feel like memory. He had seen flames. He had felt fury so intense it seemed to have a shape. He had watched cotton burn and somehow known, with a certainty that unsettled him, that he had saved some from the fire.

It was not just a dream.

The reports confirmed enough of it to make his chest tighten. A few people had been saved. Some of the destruction had already taken place. Pieces of the event existed in the world outside his mind, which made the whole thing feel even stranger, as though he had touched a half-remembered life and found it waiting for him on the other side.

Theron no longer understood himself.

Some dreams felt so real they seemed to belong to him more than his own waking life did. And yet his actual existence felt strange, incomplete, as if he were moving through it with something fundamental missing.

It was like tasting food without salt, or looking at a rose stripped of its scent. The flower remained, but something essential had been stolen from it. Without its fragrance, what was a rose? Was the beauty still enough, if the soul of it had gone?

That was how he felt now.

Detached.

Unmoored.

As though some tether that had once bound him to himself had been severed, leaving him to drift through his own life without the thing that made it feel real.

Kael swallowed hard, then bowed his head deeper. "With all due respect, it could have been you, Sire," he said.

The men in chains heard that and erupted at once.

"You destroyed the cotton and you dare torture us?" one of them shouted.

"We do not have any cotton," another cried. "If we had it, we would have told you."

"Please spare us, Your Highness!"

Theron rose in one smooth motion, sword in hand.

His fingers traced lightly along the blade, and for a moment his reflection stared back at him from the polished steel. His eyes lifted. The dark, unreadable gaze that met theirs was no longer distant or distracted. It had gone still in a way that was far more dangerous.

Then he moved.

Slash.

Slash.

Slash.

Three swift strokes, precise and merciless, and the three heads rolled to the floor before their pleading could even collapse into silence.

Kael jumped back in shock.

He had never seen the Crown Prince act like this before.

There had always been rumors, of course. The cruel prince. The cold prince. The one who could make a man disappear with a word. But most of that reputation had been built on fear and rumor rather than direct experience.

For petty matters like this, his liege would normally threaten, punish, or simply erase the memory of the encounter and send the offender away. He did not kill lightly. He had never killed lightly.

And yet something had changed.

Kael could feel it in the air, a raw and violent rage burning through Theron so fiercely that it seemed to lash out at everything around him, even the shadows themselves.

But the blood on the floor did not soothe him. It did not calm the storm inside him. It only made the silence after the killings feel heavier, as though nothing he did could reach whatever was twisting through his chest.

And that, more than the deaths themselves, was what frightened Kael. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

Because it meant this rage was not clean.

It was not purposeful.

It was not the calm, controlled cruelty of a prince who knew exactly what he wanted.

It was something wounded.

Something confused.

Something that had begun to break him from the inside out.

heron turned toward Kael and held out his hand.

Kael jerked back at once, instinctively wary, but after a beat, he realized the Crown Prince was only waiting for the report. He stepped forward carefully, placed the documents into Theron’s hand, and then withdrew as though he feared even that small exchange might be judged too presumptuous. Theron took the papers without a word and walked away.

He needed to deal with the cotton crisis before it became something worse.

If he had truly caused it, he could not understand why. Even if he had wanted to sever the engagement, even if some part of him had wished to put as much distance as possible between himself and Rosalyn, he could not imagine any reason he would go so far as to ignite chaos simply to do it. That made no sense. It felt unlike him in every way that mattered.

So why did it feel as though he had?

The question followed him like a shadow all the way out.

Before he knew it, he had already teleported to the Arcanum, and not just anywhere within it, but close to the girls’ dormitory. The suddenness of his arrival did little to slow the strange, driven certainty moving through him.

He stood there for a moment, staring up at the building, the familiar ache in his chest sharpening into something restless and raw.

How many times should I let myself be wounded by her, he thought.

And yet his feet had already begun to move.

It was not entirely a decision. It felt more like surrender. Some deep, stubborn pull had taken hold of him and was drawing him forward, as though something in that room was waiting for him, calling him closer even when every sensible part of him wanted to turn back.

His heart pounded harder with each step.

When he finally reached the window of her room, he slowed, tension tightening through him so sharply that even his breathing seemed to change.

Would she be alone?

Or would he find himself hurt again, in some new and humiliating way, before he even understood what he had come for?

And before he could gather himself to have a peek, her face popped out of the window, and there was a bright smile on her face.

"Oh, there you are... I was just thinking about you..."

Theron blinked.

Am I dreaming?